The Effects of a Dorsiflexor Strengthening and Plantarflexor Stretching Program on Balance in the Elderly: A Pilot Study

Today, falls have become the most common life-threatening hazard in seniors. Falls have been associated with a number of disabilities including the muscular weakness and decreased flexibility that accompany aging. These factors may be involved in the poor balance that has also been idetified as a risk factor for falling. It was the purpose of this research project to: (1) determine if the exercises prescribed to increase strength and flexibility of the ankle were effective in a control group of ten college students, and (2) to test the effects of a plantarflexor stretching and dorsiflexor strengthening program on balance in a group of five elderly subjects. It was hypothesized that all groups would show improved scores on all measurements at the end of a four week exercise regimen. A group of ten healthy students had their dorsiflexor strength tested with the Microfet™ hand-held dynamometer, and their plantarflexor flexibility measured with a goniometer. They were asked to perform a simple home exercise program for strengthening the ankle dorsiflexors and stretching the ankle plantarflexors. Strengthening was achieved by raising the forefoot against gravity by bending at the ankle. These were performed in a set of fifteen repetitions three times per day. Stretching was achieved through a stretch done in long-sitting and using a belt or towel to pull the forefoot towards the knee through bending at the ankle. This stretch was held for thirty seconds per session, three times per day. The elderly subjects, those over the age of sixty, were tested according to the Berg balance assessment tool, and using the strength and flexibility measurements as above. All groups performed the exercises for four weeks and were retested at that time. Although the small subject groups made it impossible to draw concrete conclusions from the results, it was found that the only significant improvements in scores was seen on right-side ankle flexibility in the student group. This research should help to lay the groundwork for future studies on balance and muscle strength and flexibility

Tweeting Library and Information Science: a socio-topical distance analysis

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how topical distance and social distance can provide meaningful results when analysing scholars’ tweets linking to scholarly publications. To do so, we analyse the social and topical distance between tweeted information science papers and their academic tweeters. This allows us to characterize the tweets of scientific papers, the tweeting behavior of scholars, and the relationship between tweets and citations

A community of curious souls : an analysis of commenting behavior on TED talks videos

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks website hosts video recordings of various experts, celebrities, academics, and others who discuss their topics of expertise. Funded by advertising and members but provided free online, TED Talks have been viewed over a billion times and are a science communication phenomenon. Although the organization has been derided for its populist slant and emphasis on entertainment value, no previous research has assessed audience reactions in order to determine the degree to which presenter characteristics and platform affect the reception of a video. This article addresses this issue via a content analysis of comments left on both the TED website and the YouTube platform (on which TED Talks videos are also posted). It was found that commenters were more likely to discuss the characteristics of a presenter on YouTube, whereas commenters tended to engage with the talk content on the TED website. In addition, people tended to be more emotional when the speaker was a woman (by leaving comments that were either positive or negative). The results can inform future efforts to popularize science amongst the public, as well as to provide insights for those looking to disseminate information via Internet videos

Collection development in the era of big deals

Drawing on an original methodology using citations, downloads, and survey data, this paper analyzes journal usage patterns across 28 Canadian universities. Results show that usage levels vary across disciplines and that different academic platforms varied in their importance to different institutions, with for-profit platforms generally exhibiting lower usage. These results suggest economic inefficiencies exist in “big deal” academic journal subscriptions for universities, as most journals in such bundles are seldom or never used. We recommend that universities coordinate resource sharing and negotiate strategies with academic journal expenditures based on shared interests and usage trends

Vanishing industries and the rising monopoly of universities in published research

Anecdotes abound regarding the decline of basic research in industrial and governmental settings, but very little empirical evidence exists about the phenomenon. This article provides a systematic and historical analysis of the contribution of various institutional sectors to knowledge production at the world and country levels across the past four decades. It highlights a dramatic decline in the diffusion of basic research by industrial and governmental sectors across all countries—with a corresponding increase in the share from universities—as well as an increase of partnerships between universities and other sectors. Results also shows an increase in the relative share of industries in applied research, as measured through patents. Such divergence in university and industry research activities may hinder industries’ ability to translate basic knowledge into technological innovation, and could lead to a growing misalignment between doctoral training and future job expectations. Industries and universities must rethink strategies for partnerships and publishing to maximize scientific progress and to ensure the greatest gains for society

Scientists popularizing science : characteristics and impact of TED talk presenters

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference and associated website of recorded conference presentations (TED Talks) is a highly successful disseminator of science-related videos, claiming over a billion online views. Although hundreds of scientists have presented at TED, little information is available regarding the presenters, their academic credentials, and the impact of TED Talks on the general population. This article uses bibliometric and webometric techniques to gather data on the characteristics of TED presenters and videos and analyze the relationship between these characteristics and the subsequent impact of the videos. The results show that the presenters were predominately male and non-academics. Male-authored videos were more popular and more liked when viewed on YouTube. Videos by academic presenters were more commented on than videos by others and were more liked on YouTube, although there was little difference in how frequently they were viewed. The majority of academic presenters were senior faculty, males, from United States-based institutions, were visible online, and were cited more frequently than average for their field. However, giving a TED presentation appeared to have no impact on the number of citations subsequently received by an academic, suggesting that although TED popularizes research, it may not promote the work of scientists within the academic community

Contributorship and division of labor in knowledge production

Scientific authorship has been increasingly complemented with contributorship statements. While such statements are said to ensure more equitable credit and responsibility attribution, they also provide an opportunity to examine the roles and functions that authors play in the construction of knowledge and the relationship between these roles and authorship order. Drawing on a comprehensive and multidisciplinary dataset of 87,002 documents in which contributorship statements are found, this article examines the forms that division of labor takes across disciplines, the relationships between various types of contributions, as well as the relationships between the contribution types and various indicators of authors’ seniority. It shows that scientific work is more highly divided in medical disciplines than in mathematics, physics, and disciplines of the social sciences, and that, with the exception of medicine, the writing of the paper is the task most often associated with authorship. The results suggest a clear distinction between contributions that could be labeled as ‘technical’ and those that could be considered ‘conceptual’: While conceptual tasks are typically associated with authors with higher seniority, technical tasks are more often performed by younger scholars. Finally, results provide evidence of a U-shaped relationship between extent of contribution and author order: In all disciplines, first and last authors typically contribute to more tasks than middle authors. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for the reward system of science

Business and Information Technology Alignment Measurement -- a recent Literature Review

Since technology has been involved in the business context, Business and Information Technology Alignment (BITA) has been one of the main concerns of IT and Business executives and directors due to its importance to overall company performance, especially today in the age of digital transformation. Several models and frameworks have been developed for BITA implementation and for measuring their level of success, each one with a different approach to this desired state. The BITA measurement is one of the main decision-making tools in the strategic domain of companies. In general, the classical-internal alignment is the most measured domain and the external environment evolution alignment is the least measured. This literature review aims to characterize and analyze current research on BITA measurement with a comprehensive view of the works published over the last 15 years to identify potential gaps and future areas of research in the field.Comment: 12 pages, Preprint version, BIS 2018 International Workshops, Berlin, Germany, July 18 to 20, 2018, Revised Paper